Norton Internet Security vs Windows Defenderon Windows 8 (Edition 1)
Antivirus & Internet Security
Windows 8
July 2012

Document: Norton Internet Security vs Windows Defender on Windows 8 (Edition 1)
Authors:
M. Baquiran, D. Wren
Company: PassMark Software
Date:
9 July 2012
Edition:1
File:
antivirus_win8-performance-testing-ed1.docx

Norton Internet Security vs. Windows Defender on Windows 8

Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS......................................................................................................................................... 2
REVISION HISTORY............................................................................................................................................ 3
REFERENCES...................................................................................................................................................... 3
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ...................................................................................................................................... 4
PRODUCTS AND VERSIONS ............................................................................................................................... 5PERFORMANCE METRICS SUMMARY ................................................................................................................ 6
TEST RESULTS ................................................................................................................................................... 8
BENCHMARK 1 – BOOT TIME ..................................................................................................................................... 8
BENCHMARK 2 – SCAN TIME ..................................................................................................................................... 8
BENCHMARK 3 – FILE COPY, MOVE AND DELETE ........................................................................................................... 8
BENCHMARK 4 – INSTALLATION OF THIRD PARTY APPLICATIONS ....................................................................................... 9
BENCHMARK 5 – FILE FORMAT CONVERSION ................................................................................................................ 9
BENCHMARK 6 – FILE COMPRESSION AND DECOMPRESSION ............................................................................................ 9
BENCHMARK 7 – FILE WRITE, OPEN AND CLOSE .......................................................................................................... 10
BENCHMARK 8 – BOOT TIME ON SSD ....................................................................................................................... 10
BENCHMARK 9 – SCAN TIME ON SSD ........................................................................................................................ 10
BENCHMARK 10 – FILE COPY, MOVE AND DELETE ON SSD ........................................................................................... 11
DISCLAIMER AND DISCLOSURE ....................................................................................................................... 12
CONTACT DETAILS .......................................................................................................................................... 12
APPENDIX 1 – TEST ENVIRONMENT ................................................................................................................ 13
APPENDIX 2 – METHODOLOGY DESCRIPTION ................................................................................................. 14

Performance Benchmark
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Norton Internet Security vs. Windows Defender on Windows 8

Revision History
Rev
Edition 1

Revision History

Date

Initial version of this report.

9 July 2012

References
Ref #

1

Document

What Really Slows Windows Down (URL)

Performance Benchmark
Edition 1

AuthorO. Warner,
The PC Spy

Date

2001-2012

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Norton Internet Security vs. Windows Defender on Windows 8

Executive Summary
PassMark Software® conducted objective performance testing on Norton Internet Security and on Windows
Defender. This report presents our results and findings as a result of performance benchmark testing conductedon these two products.
For more details on which versions were tested, please see the section “Products and Versions”.
Testing included ten (10) performance metrics. These performance metrics are as follows: Boot Time; Scan Time; File Copy, Move and Delete; PE Scan Time; Installation of Third Party Applications; File Format Conversion;
 File Compression and Decompression; Boot Time on SSD; Scan Time on SSD; and File, Copy, Move and Delete on SSD.

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Norton Internet Security vs. Windows Defender on Windows 8

Products and Versions
The names and versions of the two security products tested are as follows:

Manufacturer

Product Name

Release Year

Product Version

Date Tested

Symantec Corporation

Norton Internet Security 20132012

20.0.0.133

Jun 2012

Microsoft Corporation

Windows Defender

2012

4.0.8400.0 (This version
comes installed with
Windows 8 Release
Preview build 8400)

Jun 2012

Performance Benchmark
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Norton Internet Security vs. Windows Defender on Windows 8

Performance Metrics Summary
The metrics described below test the impact of the security software on common tasks that end-users would
perform on a daily basis.
All of PassMark Software’s test methods can be replicated by third parties using the same environment to obtain
similar benchmark results. Detailed descriptions of the methodologies used in our tests are available as“Appendix 2 – Methodology Description” of this report.
Note that Benchmarks 1-7 were conducted using a HDD as the main boot drive, and Benchmarks 8-10 wereconducted using a SSD as the main boot drive.

Benchmark 1 – Boot Time
This metric measures the amount of time taken for the machine to boot into the operating system. Security
software is generally launched at Windows startup, adding an additional amount of time and delaying thestartup of the operating system. Shorter boot times indicate that the application has had less impact on thenormal operation of the machine.

Benchmark 2 – Scan TimeAll antivirus solutions have functionality designed to detect viruses and various other forms of malware byscanning files on the system. This metric measured the amount of time required to scan a set of clean files. Our
sample file set comprised a total file size of 982 MB and was made up of files that would typically be found on
end-user machines, such as media files, system files and Microsoft Office documents.

Benchmark 3 – File Copy, Move and Delete
This metric measures the amount of time taken to move, copy and delete a sample set of files. The sample file
set contains several types of file formats that a Windows user would encounter in daily use. These formats
include documents (e.g. Microsoft Office documents, Adobe PDF, Zip files, etc), media formats (e.g. images,
movies and music) and system files (e.g. executables, libraries, etc).

Benchmark 4 – Installing Third Party Applications
This metric measures the amount of time taken to install and uninstall third party programs. The installation
speed of third party applications may be impacted by antivirus behavior such as heuristics or real time malware
scanning.

Benchmark 5 – File Format Conversion
This test measures the amount of time taken to convert an MP3 file to a WAV and subsequently, convert thesame MP3 file to a WMA format.

Benchmark 6 – File Compression and Decompression
This metric measures the amount of time taken to compress and decompress different types of files. Files
formats used in this test included documents, movies and images.
Performance Benchmark
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Norton Internet Security vs. Windows Defender on Windows 8

Benchmark 7 – File Write, Open and Close
This benchmark was derived from Oli Warner’s File I/O test at http://www.thepcspy.com (please see Reference#1: What Really Slows Windows Down). This metric measures the amount of time taken to write a file, thenopen and close that file.

Benchmark 8 – Boot Time on SSD
This benchmark is equivalent to Benchmark 1 except it is carried out on the SSD configuration.

Benchmark 9 – Scan Time on SSD
This benchmark is equivalent to Benchmark 2 except it is carried out on the SSD configuration.

Benchmark 10 – File Copy, Move and Delete on SSD
This benchmark is equivalent to Benchmark 3 except it is carried out on the SSD configuration.

Performance Benchmark
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Norton Internet Security vs. Windows Defender on Windows 8

Test Results
In the following comparison charts, we have highlighted the results we obtained for Norton Internet Security inyellow. For all benchmarks, the lower the time taken to complete the test, the better the product has performedin that category. Note that Benchmarks 1-7 were conducted using a HDD as the main boot drive, andBenchmarks 8-10 were conducted using a SSD as the main boot drive.

Benchmark 1 – Boot TimeThe following chart compares the average time taken for the system to boot (from a sample of five boots),
between Norton Internet Security and Windows Defender.

Norton Internet Security

33.94

Windows Defender

38.10

0s

5s

10 s

15 s

20 s

25 s

30 s

35 s

40 s

45 s

Benchmark 2 – Scan TimeThe following chart compares the average time taken to scan a set of 6159 files (totaling 982 MB), between
Norton Internet Security and Windows Defender. This time is calculated by averaging the initial (Run 1) andsubsequent (Runs 2-5) scan times.

Norton Internet Security

20.25

Windows Defender

49.38

0s

10 s

20 s

30 s

40 s

50 s

60 s

Benchmark 3 – File Copy, Move and Delete
The following chart compares the average time taken to copy, move and delete several sets of sample files,
between Norton Internet Security and Windows Defender.

Norton Internet Security

29.54

Windows Defender

32.76

0s

Performance Benchmark
Edition 1

5s

10 s

15 s

20 s

25 s

30 s

35 s

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Norton Internet Security vs. Windows Defender on Windows 8

Benchmark 4 – Installation of Third Party Applications
The following chart compares the average time taken to install 3 different third party applications, between
Norton Internet Security and Windows Defender.

Norton Internet Security

22.78

Windows Defender

33.68

0s

5s

10 s

15 s

20 s

25 s

30 s

35 s

40 s

Benchmark 5 – File Format Conversion
The following chart compares the average time it takes for five sample files to be converted from one file format
to another (MP3  WMA, MP3  WAV), between Norton Internet Security and Windows Defender.

Norton Internet Security

75.87

Windows Defender

77.17

0s

10 s

20 s

30 s

40 s

50 s

60 s

70 s

80 s

90 s

Benchmark 6 – File Compression and Decompression
The following chart compares the average time it takes for sample files to be compressed and decompressed,
between Norton Internet Security and Windows Defender.

Norton Internet Security

81.93

Windows Defender

87.11

0s

Performance Benchmark
Edition 1

10 s

20 s

30 s

40 s

50 s

60 s

70 s

80 s

90 s

100 s

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Norton Internet Security vs. Windows Defender on Windows 8

Benchmark 7 – File Write, Open and Close
The following chart compares the average time it takes for a file to be written to the hard drive, and thenopened and closed 180,000 times, between Norton Internet Security and Windows Defender.

Norton Internet Security

29.88

Windows Defender275.53

0s

50 s

100 s

150 s

200 s

250 s

300 s

Benchmark 8 – Boot Time on SSD
The following chart compares the average time taken for the system to boot (from a sample of five boots),
between Norton Internet Security and Windows Defender, using a Solid State Drive as the main boot drive.

Norton Internet Security

13.43

Windows Defender

13.55

0s

2s

4s

6s

8s

10 s

12 s

14 s

16 s

Benchmark 9 – Scan Time on SSD
The following chart compares the average time taken to scan a set of 6159 files (totaling 982 MB), between
Norton Internet Security and Windows Defender, using a Solid State Drive as the main boot drive. This time iscalculated by averaging the initial (Run 1) and subsequent (Runs 2-5) scan times.

Norton Internet Security

9.25

Windows Defender

32.13

0s

Performance Benchmark
Edition 1

5s

10 s

15 s

20 s

25 s

30 s

35 s

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Norton Internet Security vs. Windows Defender on Windows 8

Benchmark 10 – File Copy, Move and Delete on SSD
The following chart compares the average time taken to copy, move and delete several sets of sample files,
between Norton Internet Security and Windows Defender, using a Solid State Drive as the main boot drive.

Norton Internet Security

8.33

Windows Defender

13.90

0s

Performance Benchmark
Edition 1

2s

4s

6s

8s

10 s

12 s

14 s

16 s

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Norton Internet Security vs. Windows Defender on Windows 8

Disclaimer and DisclosureThis report only covers the versions that are listed in the “Products and Versions” section of this report.

Disclaimer of Liability
While every effort has been made to ensure that the information presented in this report is accurate, PassMark
Software Pty Ltd assumes no responsibility for errors, omissions, or out-of-date information and shall not beliable in any manner whatsoever for direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages resulting
from the availability of, use of, access of, or inability to use this information.

Disclosure
Symantec Corporation funded the production of this report, selected the test metrics and list of products toinclude in this report, and supplied some of the test scripts used for the tests.

Trademarks
All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Contact Details
PassMark Software Pty Ltd
Suite 202, Level 2
35 Buckingham St.
Surry Hills, 2010
Sydney, Australia
Phone + 61 (2) 9690 0444
Fax

+ 61 (2) 9690 0445

Web

www.passmark.com

Download Location
An electronic copy of this report can be found at the following location:
http://www.passmark.com/win8-avreport

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Norton Internet Security vs. Windows Defender on Windows 8

Appendix 1 – Test Environment
For our testing, PassMark Software used a test environment running Windows 8 Release Preview build 8400 (64bit) with the following hardware specifications:Windows 8 (64-bit) System
CPU:Intel Core i7 920 Quad Core @ 2.67GHz

Video Card:nVidia GeForce 8800 GT

Motherboard:Intel x58 Motherboard

RAM:

6GB DDR3 RAM

HDD (main boot drive):

Western Digital 500GB 7200RPM

SSD (main boot drive):
Network:

Gigabit (1GB/s) switch

Corsair Force Series F115 115GB 2.5" Serial ATA II 3.0Gb/s MLC SSD

Note: In the above specifications, the HDD (Hard Disk Drive) was used as a main drive for the HDD configuration,
whereas the SSD (Solid State Drive) was used as a main drive for the SSD configuration.

Performance Benchmark
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Norton Internet Security vs. Windows Defender on Windows 8

Appendix 2 – Methodology Description
Windows 8 Image Creation
As with testing on Windows Vista, Norton Ghost was used to create a “clean” baseline image prior to testing.
Our aim is to create a baseline image with the smallest possible footprint and reduce the possibility of variation
caused by external operating system factors.
The baseline image was restored prior to testing of each different product. This process ensures that we install
and test all products on the same, “clean” machine.
The steps taken to create the base Windows 8 image are as follows:1.

Installation and activation of Windows 7 Ultimate Edition.

2.

Disabled Automatic Updates.

3.

Changed User Account Control settings to “Never Notify”.

4.

Disable Windows Defender automatic scans to avoid unexpected background activity.

5.

Disable the Windows firewall to avoid interference with security software.

6.

Installed Norton Ghost for imaging purposes.

7.

Disabled Superfetch to ensure consistent results.

8.

Installed HTTP Watch for Browse Time testing.

9.

Installed Windows Performance Toolkit x64 for Boot Time testing.

10.

Installed Active Perl for interpretation of some test scripts.

11.

Install OSForensics for testing (Installation Size and Registry Key Count tests) purposes.

12.

Disabled updates, accelerators and compatibility view updates in Internet Explorer 8.

13.

Update to Windows Service Pack 1

14.

Update to Windows 8 Release Preview Build 8400.

15.

Created a baseline image using Norton Ghost.

Benchmark 1 – Boot Time
PassMark Software uses tools available from the Windows Performance Toolkit (as part of the Microsoft
Windows 7 ADK version 8.59.12616 obtainable from the Microsoft Website).
The boot process is first optimized with xbootmgr.exe using the command “xbootmgr.exe -trace boot –prepSystem” which prepares the system for the test over six optimization boots. The boot traces obtained fromthe optimization process are discarded.
After boot optimization, the benchmark is conducted using the command "xbootmgr.exe -trace boot -numruns
5”. This command boots the system five times in succession, taking detailed boot traces for each boot cycle.
Finally, a post-processing tool was used to parse the boot traces and obtain the BootTimeViaPostBoot value. Thisvalue reflects the amount of time it takes the system to complete all (and only) boot time processes. Our final
result is an average of five boot traces.

Performance Benchmark
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Norton Internet Security vs. Windows Defender on Windows 8

Benchmark 2 – Scan Time
Scan Time is the time it took for each product to scan a set of sample files. The sample used was identical in allcases and contained a mixture of system files and Office files. In total there were 6159 files whose combined size
was 982 MB. Most of these files come from the Windows system folders. As the file types can influence scanningspeed, the breakdown of the main file types, file numbers and total sizes of the files in the sample set is given
here:

Performance Benchmark
Edition 1

File Extension

Number of Files

File Size

.dll
.exe
.sys
.gif
.doc
.wmf
.png
.html
.nls
.jpg
.ini
.ico
.mof
.ax
.xls
.ime
.drv
.txt
.chm
.cpl
.mfl
.inf
.hlp
.imd
.py
.msc
.vbs
.xml
.rtf
.ocx
.tsp
.com
.xsl
.h
.vsd
.scr
.aw
.js
.zip
.lex
.ppt
.acm
.wav
Total

2589
695
332
302
281
185
149
126
80
70
59
58
43
39
38
35
31
31
30
29
29
26
22
20
20
18
18
18
16
16
14
14
14
13
12
12
12
12
11
9
9
9
7
6159

490MB
102MB
23MB
1MB
64MB
2MB
2MB
1MB
6MB
1MB
2MB
<1MB
6MB
4MB
3MB
5MB
1MB
1MB
6MB
4MB
3MB
2MB
3MB
18MB
<1MB
1MB
1MB
1MB
62MB
4MB
1MB
<1MB
<1MB
<1MB
2MB
2MB
2MB
1MB
25MB
10MB
4MB
1MB
5MB
982

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Norton Internet Security vs. Windows Defender on Windows 8This scan was run without launching the product’s user interface, by right-clicking the test folder and choosing
the “Scan Now” option. To record the scan time, we have used product’s built-in scan timer or reporting system.
Where this was not possible, scan times were taken manually with a stopwatch.
For each product, five samples were taken with the machine rebooted before each sample to clear any cachingeffects by the operating systems.
In 2009, we noticed many more products showing a substantial difference between the initial scan time (firstscan) and subsequent scan times (scans 2 to 5). We believe this behavior is due to products themselves caching
recently scanned files.
As a result of this mechanism, we have averaged the four subsequent scan times to obtain an averagesubsequent scan time. Our final result for this test is an average of the subsequent scan average and the initialscan time.

Benchmarks 3 – File Copy, Move and Delete
This test measures the amount of time required for the system to copy, move and delete samples of files invarious file formats. This process was timed using CommandTimer.exe.
This sample was made up of 812 files over 760,867,636 bytes and can be categorized as documents [26% of
total], media files [54% of total] and PE files (i.e. System Files) [20% of total].
The breakdown of the main file types, file numbers and total sizes of the files in the sample set is shown in thefollowing table:

Performance Benchmark
Edition 1

File format

NumberSize (bytes)

DOC

830,450,176

DOCX

4

13,522,409

PPT

3

5,769,216

PPTX

3

4,146,421

XLS

4

2,660,352

XLSX

4

1,426,054

PDF

73

136,298,049

ZIP

4

6,295,987

7Z

1

92,238JPG

351

31,375,259

GIF

6148,182MOV

7

57,360,371

RM

1

5,658,646

AVI

8

78,703,408

WMV

5

46,126,167

MP3

28

191,580,387

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Norton Internet Security vs. Windows Defender on Windows 8

EXE

19

2,952,914

DLL

104

29,261,568

AX

118,432CPL

22,109,440

CPX

2

4,384

DRV

10

154,864

ICO

1

107,620MSC

141,587

NT

1

1,688

ROM

2

36,611SCR

22,250,240

SYS

1

37,528,093

TLB

3

135,580

TSK

1

1,152

UCE

1

22,984EXE

192,952,914

DLL

104

29,261,568

AX

118,432CPL

22,109,440

CPX

2

4,384

DRV

10

154,864

ICO

1

107,620MSC

141,587

NT

1

1,688

ROM

2

36,611SCR

22,250,240

SYS

1

37,528,093

TLB

3

135,580

TSK

1

1,152

UCE

1

22,984

Total

812

760,867,636

This test was conducted five times to obtain the average time to copy, move and delete the sample files, withthe test machine rebooted between each sample to remove potential caching effects.

Benchmark 4 – Third Party Program Installation
This test measured how much time was required to install and uninstall a third party application. For this test,
CommandTimer.exe timed how long it took to install and uninstall the following applications on the test
machine:Performance Benchmark
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Norton Internet Security vs. Windows Defender on Windows 8Firefox 3.6.3 (11,909 KB) (MSI File)
Microsoft .NET 3.5 (34,121 KB) (MSI File)
Steam (1,551 KB) (MSI File)

This test was conducted five times to obtain the average time to install/uninstall the above third party
programs, with the test machine rebooted between each sample to remove potential caching effects.

Benchmark 5 – File Format Conversion (MP3  WAV, MP3  WMA)
This test measured how much time was required to convert five (5) different MP3 files into WAV files andsubsequently, convert the same MP3 samples into a WMA files. The total size of the five (5) MP3s used was
25,870,899 bytes.
To encode the MP3 into another format, we used an application called ffmpeg.exe. The format conversion
process was timed using CommandTimer.exe.
This test was conducted five times to obtain the average conversion speed between these formats, with the test
machine rebooted between each sample to remove potential caching effects.

Benchmark 6 – File Compression and Decompression
This test measured the amount of time required to compress and decompress a sample set of files. For this test,
we used a subset of the media and documents files used in the File Copy, Move and Delete benchmark.
CommandTimer.exe recorded the amount of time required for 7zip.exe to compress the files into a *.zip andsubsequently decompress the created *.zip file.
This subset comprised 1,218 files over 783 MB. The breakdown of the file types, file numbers and total sizes ofthe files in the sample set is shown in the following table:

Performance Benchmark
Edition 1

File Type

File Number

Total Size

.xls

13

9.23 MB.xlsx

93.51 MB.ppt

97.37 MB.pptx

1117.4 MB.doc

17

35.9 MB.docx

1924.5 MB.gif

177

1.10 MB.jpg

737

66.2 MB.png

15948.9 MB.mov7

54.7 MB.rm

1

5.39 MB.avi

46

459 MB.wma

1148.6 MB.avi

46

459 MB

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Norton Internet Security vs. Windows Defender on Windows 8

.wma

11

48.6 MB

Total

1218

783 MB

This test was conducted five times to obtain the average file compression and decompression speed, with thetest machine rebooted between each sample to remove potential caching effects.

Benchmark 7 – File Write, Open and Close
This benchmark was derived from Oli Warner’s File I/O test at http://www.thepcspy.com (please see Reference#1: What Really Slows Windows Down).
For this test, we developed OpenClose.exe, an application that looped writing a small file to disk, then opening
and closing that file. CommandTimer.exe was used to time how long the process took to complete 180,000
cycles.
This test was conducted five times to obtain the average file writing, opening and closing speed, with the test
machine rebooted between each sample to remove potential caching effects.

Benchmark 8 – Boot Time on SSD
This benchmark is equivalent to Benchmark 1 except that it is carried out on the SSD configuration.

Benchmark 9 – Scan Time on SSD
This benchmark is equivalent to Benchmark 2 except that it is carried out on the SSD configuration.

Benchmark 10 – File Write, Open and Close
This benchmark is equivalent to Benchmark 3 except that it is carried out on the SSD configuration.

Performance Benchmark
Edition 1

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